"The world is oft to treason not unkind,
But ne'er the traitor can admirers find."
It was the evening of the same day.
Two men were sitting together in what was called the Greek Room by the
household of Rede Place.
The elder of the two was close to the fireplace, his stiff, thin hands
held out to the blue shooting flames of a wood fire. Although he was
dressed for dinner, there was that about him which suggested invalidism.
Cushions were piled behind him in the deep, capacious chair in which he
seemed to crouch rather than to sit, and a light rug was thrown across
his knees, although it was only the 1st of October.
This was Richard Maule, whose name was known to the cosmopolitan world
of scholars as a Hellenist, an authority on classical archæology, on the
slowly excavated story of long-buried civilizations. To those who dwelt
in the present, and who only cared for the things of to-day, he was
enviable as the owner of a delightful and, in its way, a famous estate
in Surrey.
Rede Place! The enchanting, rather artificial pleasaunce created out of
what had been a primeval stretch of woodland by an early Victorian
millionaire! The banker _virtuoso_, Theophilus Joy, had committed what
we should now consider the crime of pulling down a fine old Tudor
manor-house in order to reproduce in the keener English climate and
alien English soil those Palladian harmonies of form which have their
natural home only beneath southern skies.
There had been a time in the 'fifties and the 'sixties when Rede Place
had been a synonym for all that was exquisite and perfect in art and
life. But Richard Maule, though he shared many of the tastes, and had
inherited all the wealth of his grandfather, was a recluse. Not even the
possession of a singularly beautiful and attractive wife ever made him
throw open Rede Place in the old, hospitable, magnificent way in which
it had been thrown open during his own childhood and early youth.
As far as was possible, he lived alone--alone, that is, with the
companionship of his wife, when she was willing to favour him with her
companionship, and fortunate in the constant society of his kinsman,
Dick Wantele, whom all the world knew to be Richard Maule's ultimate
heir, that is, the future owner of Rede Place.
Each of the rooms of the long Italianate house was filled with curious,
rare, and costly works of art, offering many points of interest to the
collector and student, and this was specially true of the room in which
now sat Richard Maule and Dick Wantele.
In 1843 Theophilus Joy, the friend rather than the patron of Turner, had
persuaded that eccentric and secretive genius to accompany him from
Italy to Greece. The enduring result of this journey was a remarkable
series of water-colours forming the decoration of what was henceforth
called the Greek Room of Rede Place. Over the mantelpiece was a copy, by
the artist, of "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus." Below the Turner
water-colours, and forming a latticed dado round the room, were a row of
lacquered bookcases containing Richard Maule's unique collection of
books and pamphlets, in every language, dealing with the Greece of the
past and of the present.
* * * * *
Dick Wantele sat as far from the fire as was possible, close to a window
which he would have preferred to have open. His long, angular figure was
bent almost in two over his knee, on which there lay propped up a block
of drawing paper. He was drawing busily, sketching a small house, by the
side of which was a rough plan of what was evidently to be the inside of
the house. A heavily-shaded lamp left in shadow his pale, lantern-jawed
face, only redeemed from real ugliness by its expression of alert
intelligence.
The two, unlike most men living in the difficult juxtaposition of owner
and heir, were on the most excellent terms the one with the other.
Theirs indeed was the happy kind of intimacy which requires no words,
no futile exchange of small talk, to prove kindliness and understanding;
and when at last Richard Maule spoke, he did not even turn round, for he
was used to the other's instant comprehension and sympathy.
"Then the Paches are bringing over General Lingard to dinner next
Tuesday?"
The younger man looked up quickly. "Yes, on Tuesday," he said. "Athena
seems to think that will be the best day for them to come. You see, Jane
Oglander will be here then."
"I'm glad of that," said Richard Maule.
"I hope their coming won't bore you, Richard. Athena couldn't get out of
it. You see Pache practically asked her to ask them over. They want to
show their lion, and they also want to entertain their lion! I confess
I'm rather looking forward to seeing Lingard."
"I've seen so many lions." Mr. Maule spoke with a touch of weary
irritation. And then he added, after a rather long pause, "I never cared
for soldiers, at any rate not for your modern man of war who goes out
with a Gatling gun to kill a lot of poor niggers."
"Lingard has done more than that, Richard. He succeeded where three
other men had failed, and what is really wonderful, he did it on the
cheap."
"That I admit _is_ wonderful," said Richard Maule dryly, "but I don't
suppose the people who are now fêting him are doing it as a reward for
his economy. However, no matter, we'll entertain the Pachian hero."
The mahogany door at the end of the long room opened, then it was closed
quietly, and a woman came in, bringing with her a sudden impression of
vitality, of youth, of buoyant strength into the shadowed, over-heated
room.
Athena Maule advanced with easy, graceful steps till she stood, a
radiant figure, in the circle of warring light cast by the fire and by
the shaded lamps. Her cheeks were flushed, tinted to an exquisite
carmine that seemed to leave more white her low forehead and now heaving
bosom.
She stopped just between the two men, glancing quickly first at one and
then at the other. And then at last, after a perceptible pause, she
spoke, her clear accents, slightly foreign in their intonation, falling
ominously on the ears of her small audience of two.
"I've just had a letter from Jane Oglander."
The younger of the two men wondered with a certain lazy amusement
whether Athena was aware of how dramatic had been her announcement of a
singularly insignificant fact. As to the older man--he who sat by the
fireplace--he had turned and deliberately looked away as the door
opened. But now it was he who spoke, and this to Dick Wantele was
significant, for Richard Maule very seldom spoke of his own accord, to
his wife.
"Then isn't she coming to-morrow? It seems a long time since Jane left
us--in August, wasn't it?"
"Jane Oglander," said Mrs. Maule, her left hand playing with the tassel
terminating the Algerian scarf which slipped below her bare dimpled
shoulders, "Jane Oglander wishes me to tell you both that--that she is
going to be married."
Richard Maule fixed his stern, sunken eyes on his wife. It was a
terrible look--a look of mingled contempt and hatred.
"Anyone we know?" asked Dick Wantele quietly.
Athena Maule looked at him with a grudging admiration. Dick was
certainly what some of her English friends called "game," and her French
friends "_crâne_." She had now lived in England for some eight years,
but she did not yet understand Englishmen and their ways; and of all the
strange Englishmen she had come across, there were few that struck her
as so queer--queer was the word--as her husband's cousin, Dick Wantele.
But he had long ceased really to interest her.
Walking slowly down the long gallery upstairs, Mrs. Maule had thought
deeply how she should make her startling announcement, how reveal the
news which had hurt her so shrewdly as to make her wish--such being her
nature--that others should share her pain.
She had thought of coming in with Jane Oglander's letter open in her
hand, but no, this she decided would be rather cheap, and would also in
a measure prepare Dick--it was Dick whom she wished to hurt, whom she
knew she would hurt. Richard Maule was incapable of being hurt by
anything. But still it was very pleasant to know that even Richard would
be irritated at the thought that Jane Oglander, who had now been for so
long the one healing, soothing presence in their sombre household, and
whom he had stupidly believed would end by marrying Dick Wantele was now
going to disappear into the morass of British matronhood.
"Anyone we know?" she repeated consideringly. "No, not exactly, but
someone who is quite famous and whom we shall know very soon."
Dick Wantele shrugged his shoulders with a nervous movement. His
cousin's wife was fond of talking in enigmas, especially to him, and
especially when she knew he desired to be told a simple fact simply and
quickly.
Then something unexpected happened. Richard Maule again spoke, and again
addressed his wife.
"I suppose," he said, "you mean General Lingard?"
"How did you know? Has Jane written to you?" Mrs. Maule flashed the
questions out.
The one who looked on was vividly aware that this was the first time, so
far as he knew, for years, that Athena Maule had asked direct questions
of her husband, questions demanding answers.
Even now Richard Maule did not vouchsafe his wife the courtesy of a
reply. It seemed to him that her questions answered themselves, and in
the negative.
But Dick Wantele got up. "Is this true, Athena?" he asked abruptly. "Is
Jane engaged to General Lingard? What an extraordinary thing! Why, he
hasn't been back from West Africa more than a fortnight."
She nodded. "Yes!--it's quite true. Apparently his parents were friends
of her father ages ago. She knew him when she was a child. They met
again quite by chance last time he was in England. Then he began to
write to her. It all seems to have been arranged by letter. At least she
says they corresponded all the time he was away, and then he appears to
have gone straight to her on the evening of the day he arrived in
London. I suppose," she concluded not very pleasantly, "that she could
not dash his triumph--and so she accepted him. It is very difficult,"
she continued, "for a woman to say no to a hero."
Dick Wantele smiled. His eyes met hers with a curious flash of rather
cruel raillery. Her own dropped for a moment; then they seemed to dilate
as she went on, "I really do know what I am talking about, for you see,
Dick, Richard was a hero when I married him. In Greece we all looked
upon the great, the noble, the famous Mr. Maule as quite a hero!"
For a moment she allowed her full glance to rest on the unheroic figure
crouching by the fire, and Dick Wantele felt keenly vexed with himself.
He was not often so foolish as to wage war with Richard Maule's wife in
Richard Maule's presence.
All three hailed with relief the interruption caused by the announcement
of dinner. Wantele got up with more alacrity than usual. He walked with
a quick, sliding step to where Mrs. Maule was still standing. With a
little bow he offered her his arm.
As they left the room Mr. Maule's valet came in by another door.
Quickly, noiselessly, he brought forward an invalid table and placed on
it a tray. There was soup, some whole-meal bread, a little very fine
fruit, and a small decanter of claret. Then after the man had asked, "Is
there anything else you require, sir?" and had noted the scarcely
perceptible shake of the head with which Mr. Maule answered him, the
master of Rede Place was left alone.
Richard Maule looked at the silver bowl containing his half-pint of
soup--everything he ate was measured and weighed and prepared with the
most scrupulous accuracy according to a great doctor's ordinance--with a
kind of fastidious distaste. Since his illness he had grown particular
about his food, and yet as youth and man no one had been more
indifferent than he to the kind of luxury by which most men set such
store. During the years which had immediately preceded his marriage, it
had been his boast that he could live for days and even weeks on the
rough, unpalatable fare dear to the Greek peasant.
Steadying his right hand with his left, he ate a spoonful of soup, then
pushed the bowl away. The news his wife had taken such malicious
pleasure in telling had disturbed and pained him more than he thought
anything could now disturb and pain him. He was attached to Jane
Oglander; she was the only human being apart from Dick whose presence
was, if not agreeable, at least not unpleasant to him. In the rare
moments of kindly thought and musing on the future which sometimes
visited him, he saw Jane mistress of Rede Place, bringing peace and,
what is so much nearer the heart of life, love satisfied, to Dick
Wantele. He had felt sure that Jane, with her tenderness, her simplicity
of nature, would end where most women of her type end, by surrender.
That she would marry anyone excepting Dick Wantele had seemed
impossible. But in this life, as Richard Maule had learnt far too late,
it is what would have seemed impossible which happens.
* * * * *
Dick Wantele and Mrs. Maule sat opposite one another at a round table
set at one end of the great tapestry-hung dining-room. A stranger
seeing them would have thought the plain young man singularly blessed in
having so lovely a table-mate sitting with him at so perfectly cooked
and noiselessly served a meal as they were now enjoying.
But though there was a side of his nature peculiarly alive to certain
sensuous forms of beauty, to-night Wantele only saw in Athena the
malicious, almost the malignant, bearer of ill news.
But civilized man, if eating in company, must also talk, and so at last,
"One sees now," he said reflectively, "why the worthy Paches have been
so greatly honoured."
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Maule. It was, she found, sometimes
easier to ask Dick to explain himself than to try and guess what he
meant.
"I mean," said Wantele, "that one can now understand why General Lingard
accepted his dull relations' invitation. It was because he knew that his
young woman would be in the neighbourhood, staying here with us."
"Your choice of phrase," said Athena sharply, "is not very refined."
"Isn't it?" he said mildly. "But then, Athena, I don't know that I ever
set up to be a particularly refined person."
And then, as they sat sparring and jarring as they so often did at their
quickly-served meals, Dick Wantele gradually became aware that Mrs.
Maule was eating nothing, nay more, that her short upper lip was
trembling--large tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Why!--Athena?" he exclaimed. "You mustn't allow this unexpected news
to"--he hesitated for a word--"to upset you so much." He looked up
across at her with a not very kind curiosity. His light observant eyes
suddenly seized on what was to him an amazing sight, namely that a
folded letter, covered with a fine clear handwriting he knew with a dear
familiar knowledge, was working up out of Mrs. Maule's short bodice and
forming a grey patch on her white neck. In spite of himself, Wantele was
rather touched.
"Of course I have always known that Jane was devoted to you," he said
musingly, "but I didn't realise that the feeling was reciprocated to
such an extent as it seems to be!"
A flush of stormy anger reddened Mrs. Maule's face.
"With Jane often here it has been bad enough!" she said passionately.
"But what will my life be like henceforth?--I mean when I shan't even
have her to look forward to? Richard will force me to be here more than
ever now."
"I think you will still manage to be a good deal away----"
He had been right after all. Athena was only thinking of Jane Oglander's
marriage as it affected herself.
"Of course I shall stay away as much as I can!" she cried. "You and
Richard much prefer my absence to my presence----" her look challenged a
contradiction Wantele did not--could not utter.
"And then--and then that isn't all, Dick! I didn't mind being here when
Jane was here too to make things go well----"
"Perhaps Jane will sometimes leave her hero during the very few weeks of
the year that you are, as it were, in residence, Athena. He's going, it
seems, to be given a home appointment. I suppose they will be married
very soon?"
Wantele did not look at her as he spoke. He was tracing an imaginary
pattern on the tablecloth. The numbness induced by the horrible blow she
had dealt him was beginning to give way to stinging stabs of pain. He
longed to know more--to know everything--to turn as it were a jagged
knife in his heart-wound.
Mrs. Maule dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, then she laughed.
"No, no, Dick," she cried, "there's no such luck in store for you--I
mean for us! We're going to lose Jane--once for all. Jane has taken it
rather badly. I never thought that dear saint would fall in love!" She
suddenly became aware that his eyes were fixed on the letter she had
thrust into the bodice of her gown when walking down the long gallery
upstairs. She took it out of her warm and scented bodice, and held it
out to him.
"I think you'd better read what she says."
Wantele looked at the pretty hand holding Jane Oglander's letter, but he
made no attempt to take the folded paper. "I should _like_ to read it--"
he said lightly, "but I think I'd better not."
"Yes, do read it, Dick. Why shouldn't you?" She added slowly, "There's
something about you in it too----"
Wantele hesitated, and then he fell. He leant over and took Jane
Oglander's letter from her hand. His own was shaking, and that angered
him. He turned his chair right round, and holding the two sheets of grey
paper up close to his eyes deliberately read them slowly through.
As at last he handed them back to her, he said quietly, "You told me a
lie just now, Athena. I am not mentioned in Jane's letter."
"Indeed you are!" She pointed to a thin line of writing across the top
of the second sheet.
"'I hope Dick won't mind much'--" she read aloud.
"There's something else!" he cried quickly, and getting up strode round
and took the letter again from her with a masterful hand. "'I hope Dick
won't mind much'--" he read aloud, "'or dear Richard either.'"
Then he let the letter drop on the cloth beside her. The numbness had
all gone, the pain he felt had become almost intolerable.
Mrs. Maule again tucked Jane Oglander's letter inside her bodice, then
she got up. As he held the door open for her, Wantele put his hand, his
cool, long-fingered, impersonal hand, on her arm.
"Athena," he said softly. "I wonder how it is that you have always had
the gift of making me do things of which I knew I should live to feel
ashamed. A unique gift, dear cousin----"
She turned and laughed mischievously up into his pale suffering face.
"The woman tempted me, and so of course I ate!" she exclaimed. "You're
not much of a man, Dick, but you have always been a thorough man in the
matter of making excuses for yourself!"